The Three Pashas
-Jason
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The last years of the Ottoman Empire were dominated by three men who came to power in a coup: Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha. The word pasha was a government title in the Ottoman Empire. Collectively they are known as the Three Pashas, and they controlled the Ottoman Empire from 1909-1918. During their political ascendancy, they oversaw the destructive events that would end the nearly 600-year reign of the line of Osman.
They came to power via an organization known as the Young Turks. The Young Turks were formed from a combination of civilian and military members who sought reform inside the Ottoman Empire. These men eventually founded a new political party called the Committee of Union and Peace, or CUP, in the early 1890s. The dissidents who formed the core of the group sought to reform and rebalance the social structures of the Ottoman Empire to save it. Unfortunately, the Three Pashas became the dominant members of the CUP and pushed their own agendas.
The Young Turk movement was initially made up of political exiles from the Ottoman Empire who lived in other parts of Europe. These exiles initially were focused on reforming Ottoman society in favor of one group or another but, over time, they united in their opposition to Abdul Hamid II. Ahmet Riza and Ibrahim Temo were the founding members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Both had been living in exile for years before they were introduced by mutual associates in 1891. While they were not in complete ideological alignment, they both agreed that Abdul Hamid II needed to be ousted. Together, they were the founding members of the CUP in 1894. The organization quickly picked up many supporters inside the Ottoman Empire.
The Young Turks and the CUP, sought to overthrow the reigning sultan, Abdul Hamid II, and replace him with his half-brother Mehmed V. Sultan Abdul Hamid II had been in power since a coup had given him the throne in 1876. He inherited an empire in dire trouble: failed economic and social policies hampered the domain, and several disastrous wars resulted in the loss of major territories. The sultan used these events as a perfect excuse for suspending the Ottoman Constitution of 1876, which guaranteed political, legal, and social rights for the various ethnicities and religions of the empire, as well as establishing a parliamentary governing body. Abdul Hamid declared a state of emergency, which allowed him to suspend the constitution and reforms, and refused to revoke it.
Talaat Pasha had been a middle-rank official in the Ottoman government before the Young Turk Revolution. He was the head postmaster in the city of Thessaloniki and used his position to move messages between members of the anti-Abdul Hamid resistance groups. Although he held no military rank, Talaat Pasha became the key person for coordinating the dissidents. He became one of most powerful men in CUP and radicalized into the pro-Turkish, pro-Muslim political organization that conducted some of the grimmest massacres of the early twentieth century. Talaat Pasha was not alone in his anti-democratic leanings: he found two important allies within the Ottoman Army.
Several key members of the CUP were military officers stationed in the Balkan territories of the Ottoman Empire. Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha were two mid-rank officers attached to the garrisons in the region, and they were able to expand CUP membership among their fellow officers and soldiers. As the CUP gained more followers, Abdul Hamid II ordered that they be arrested by his secret police. This led to a crisis in 1908 when Ahmed Niyazi Bey, one of the commanding generals in the Balkans revolted against the sultan. He, and Enver Pasha had spent years building up networks of both paramilitary and professional military support. When the call for the overthrow of Abdul Hamid II and the restoration of the 1876 Constitution was called in the Balkans, the sultan tried to ignore it. However, as the days of rebellion wore on, Abdul Hamid realized that he had few supporters in either the civilian or military world.
Abdul Hamid restored the 1876 Constitution but refused to abdicate. The CUP felt that this was acceptable and began to form a parliamentary government with other political parties. While this process was taking place, Abdul Hamid II was considered a constitutional monarch. He would coordinate the efforts of the new parliament and reinstitute reform. However, Abdul Hamid II attempted a counterrevolution on 31 March 1909. This ended in failure, causing Abdul Hamid II to be removed from power and replaced by Mehmed V. Even so, the sultan was merely a figurehead and only stayed in power as a means of maintaining the legitimacy of the new government. The CUP began to split into two factions after this point: one branch that was more liberal and focused on decentralization, the other was pro-Turkish, heavily rightwing, and called for centralization of power. Most of the original members of the CUP left to join the liberals, leaving only Ahmet Riza, who tried to curb his party.
The Three Pashas became a dictatorial triumvirate following two major events: the First Balkan War in 1912 and the subsequent assassination of the grand vizier. The First Balkan War was a humiliating conflict in which the Ottoman Empire lost most of their European territory. Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia formed the Balkan League to pool their resources in expelling the Ottomans from southeast Europe. After a grueling conflict the Balkan League was victorious, but then fell into war amongst themselves. The chaos created by the First Balkan War discredited the liberal parties who were opposed to the now radicalized CUP. When the grand vizier, the highest-ranking political figure, was assassinated by supporters of the CUP in February 1913, the Three Pashas moved to take over the Ottoman government. They had the support of the army and navy as they outlawed all other political parties and expelled their rivals. Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Ahmet Djemal Pasha suspended the 1876 Constitution and split the administrative duties of the Empire between them.
The Ottoman Empire had been reorganizing and modernizing its economy and military for decades with little success. The Three Pashas were wary of Great Britain and France due to territorial losses from the 1870s onwards. Imperial Germany offered to invest not only money and materials to update the Ottoman economy and military, but they also offered it without demanding territorial concessions. The Three Pashas were drawn into the orbit of Germany and the potential of a subsequent military alliance. The Ottoman government paid Great Britain to build two dreadnoughts, battleships, and to train their crews. However, as World War I erupted in the summer of 1914, the British seized all warships that had been under construction and nationalized them. They offered the Ottomans financial compensation for the seized ships, a move that insulted the Turks because they had declared neutrality in the war.
Germany had two new warships in the Mediterranean Sea which they offered to sell to the Ottomans. Ahmet Djemal Pasha was the head of the Ottoman Navy and he convinced Talaat and Enver to consider the deal. What sold the Three Pashas into an alliance with the Central Powers was the offer of territory being returned to the Ottomans after the successful end of World War I. The Three Pashas bought the Goeben and the Breslau from Germany in early October 1914. The German crews donned fezzes and were declared members of the Ottoman Navy. The German commander and Ahmet Djemal planned a series of surprise attacks on Russian ports that took place on 28 October 1914. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, France, Great Britain, and Belgium shortly after the attacks.
Despite the element of surprise, the Ottoman Empire and its military was in no condition to fight in World War I. The Turks launched a disastrous campaign along their common border with the Russians in the Caucasus region. Bad weather, poor roads, lack of supplies, and no realistic plans led to the Ottoman forces losing ground. Enver Pasha was in command of this theater and this campaign would have dire consequences for the Armenian population inside the Ottoman Empire. He blamed the local Armenians for the failure of the Caucasus Theater. Enver Pasha saw them as a dangerous fifth column who was killing Ottoman soldiers and disrupting the front lines. Talaat Pasha oversaw the civil administration of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. His policies ensured that what he considered unreliable ethnic groups were targeted for population shifts, or extermination. Talaat Pasha crafted and signed the orders that instituted the Armenian Genocide. He also enacted similar measures against Assyrian Christians in northern Mesopotamia and ethnic Greeks throughout the Ottoman Empire. Enver Pasha and Ahmet Djemal Pasha’s forces organized the massacres that Talaat authorized. An estimated 1.5-1.8 million Armenians were murdered during forced ethnic cleansing of their traditional homelands.
Ahmet Djemal Pasha took over command of the Syrian and Mesopotamian Theaters when the Ottomans entered the war. In these too, the Ottoman Empire failed to maintain its territorial integrity. German officers and soldiers flooded into different theaters of war in the Middle East to bolster their allies. Ahmet Djemal organized a combined German-Turkish column that harassed the British in Egypt along the Suez Canal, but he was unable to exploit any breakthroughs. The Sinai-Palestine Theater, conducted between 1915-1918, eventually witnessed the British occupation of Palestine, Transjordan, and parts of Syria. During the same period, the British had sent a British-Indian army into Mesopotamia and conquered Basra (in modern Iraq) and the surrounding areas. Although the British suffered a humiliating loss at the Siege of Kut, their forces were able to capture the majority of what would become modern-day Iraq by November 1918.
By 1918, it became apparent that the Central Powers were losing World War I. Each sought a diplomatic solution to stave off the collapse of their militaries. The Three Pashas visited Berlin, Vienna, and Sophia, the capital cities of their allies, in the fall of that year. Upon seeing the dire situation of the Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians were in, the Three Pashas looked for a way to end the war. By end of October 1918, the Austrians and Bulgarians sued for peace. The Three Pashas were next to surrender; they resigned their positions and then fled the Ottoman Empire for either Germany or Central Asia to escape arrest and trial. Despite their escape, each was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
The Three Pashas were killed within years of the end of World War I. Talaat Pasha was assassinated by an Armenian while living in exile in Berlin. His assassin was arrested, tried, and acquitted of murder. Enver Pasha was killed in Afghanistan while training that army to fight against the Bolsheviks. Ahmet Djemal Pasha was killed in the Caucasus by Armenian agents. Ahemt Djemal’s death was used as an excuse by the Bolsheviks and the Republic of Turkey to crush the newly created Republic of Armenia. The decisions of these three men were the final blow to the Ottoman Empire. Their actions caused countless deaths and human suffering, the repercussions of which are still felt today.